The New Republicans - Jacobin Mag →

Jacobin Mag contributor Doug Henwood writes convincingly of the move of the Democratic Party Establisment away from the Left, away from liberalism. Historically, disaffected workers have voted for the Democratic Party candidate. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was the Democrats who supported trust-busting and unions which led to better labor conditions. For many year—perhaps since Reagan— there has been a retreat of the party establishment to the political right. They have abandoned the poor and disaffected who used to once make up their strongest cohort. Many of the poor and disaffected, mostly the poor white, have cut their losses and have moved to support the Republican Party with its talk of small government and fewer taxes. As the Democratic Party loses its core base, it is trying to win more of upper middle class suburbia. They don’t need a lot of the liberal values that made up the Democratic Party then to appeal to that base, so they’re eschewing them.

Read Mr. Henwood’s take on this shift and how it plays into the current election cycle.

Bonus: a clip from The West Wing in which the term “Liberalism” is defined and defended.